Round-table with HE research and teaching staff

After discussing with decision makers and technical staff to learn more about the drivers and barriers of Higher Education Engagement in Digital Action as a catalyst for social change during the COVID-19 crisis, the third group was that of research and teaching staff (researchers, teachers and academic staff) to talk about their own experiences with citizen science, maker movements, and hackathons, how they formed relations with the local and global community, the limits and barriers to participating in digital action, and whether they felt that these forms of digital action in HEIs could be an effective catalyst for social change.

For this group, the notion of scale was mentioned as representative of the efficacy of online versus in-person learning. Overall, DA dissemination was effective on large scale, such as through international webinars but  less effective for close-hand involvement. Here, the academic group felt that local action required face to face participation. Nonetheless, DA can bring people together virtually, with the potential for real social impact even in global crisis situations such as a pandemic.

While they pointed out several benefits to the shift to online activities during the pandemic, they pointed out several barriers to engagement in DA such as:

• The reliance on digital access in HEIs resulted in the exclusion of certain groups.
• DA can only be effective as a social catalyst if the objectives are relevant to other communities, thus DA needs to be easily transferable.
• A lack of digital literacy could result in a lack of confidence and a sense of social vulnerability.
• Different software used in different HEIs meant that stakeholders had to have a working knowledge of several programs such as Microsoft Teams and Google Drive, to be able to communicate efficiently.

Overall, the discussions were very informative of the drivers and limits of the interest of academic and teaching staff for engagement in DA.